Today's special reading has been Health and Sanitation in Communist China, as compiled by “independent researchers” for the US Joint Publications Research Service in 1956 and 1957. I am unsure which is my favourite bit. It might be number 8 of the Goals for Health in 1957, which was “to have a doctor wherever there are people.” Perhaps it was the mass movement to exterminate the Four Menaces: flies, mosquitoes, rats and sparrows (which in 1956 saw the extermination of 170,000,000 – that's 170 MILLION – sparrows. That's a lot of catapults).
I liked the 2000 farmers who spent most of 1957 digging up and then burying snails in the Shock Attack Health Movement to eradicate schistosomiasis. Or the Stalwart Young Men charged with forming a “pony express” to report epidemics of Ko'shan disease (though why they'd bother isn't clear, as Ko'shan disease is “of no specific origin with no specific treatment given for its cure.”)
I'm also partial to the schistosomiasis campaign for 1957, when “shepherd boys were mobilized to pick up stray excreta from the grounds” and when, two years into the Seven Year Campaign, “many districts can now boast a model villlage free of snails.”
But actually my favourite is the frog-plasters. Namely, that “sparganosis has been frequently reported from Fukien and Kwantung provinces. The sparganum is a genus of tapeworm found in human connective tissue. The most frequent source of infection results from the practice of applying the meat of freshly killed frogs to open wounds and ulcers as a means of treatment.”
Frogs beat stray-excreta-gathering shepherd boys. Surely.
Yesterday I travelled to Basingstoke to visit David, the Toilet Attendant of the Year, 2006. David is a nice man and the toilets he attends – at Festival Place shopping centre – are sparklingly clean. But there are chatty toilet attendants and there are well-meaning but not very forthcoming toilet attendants (not helped by him being flanked by his two jobsworth line managers). I managed fifteen minutes of clever journalistic probing:
- So, David, what do you like about your job?
- Well, I like to keep them clean.
- Why do your customers like you?
- Because I keep toilets clean.
- What's the secret to a clean toilet?
- Well, you just have to keep it clean.
And then I gave up. I felt like Mr. Lloyd. His Barking railway station was my clean toilet. Only instead of discussing navigation channels, I went shopping.